NYPD commissioner disbands plainclothes anti-crime units

NEW YORK - The NYPD is eliminating its Anti-Crime Units on the precinct level and public housing area level, Commissioner Dermot Shea announced on Monday. About 600 officers will be reassigned to the detective bureau, neighborhood policing program, and other units effective immediately. 

Anti-crime officers typically operate in plainclothes, Shea said, and focus on getting illegal guns off the streets of New York. That has led to those cops being involved in a number of shootings, the commissioner said. 

He added that the department will continue to fight violent crime and illegal guns through many modern programs and units.

Officers with the 60th Precinct's Anti-Crime Unit seized this handgun during an arrest, the NYPD said. (NYPD)

"This is 21st-century policing: intelligence, data, ShotSpotter, video, DNA, and building prosecutable cases," Shea said. "It continues to be building these cases—cases on a small number of people that unfortunately still terrorize a part of this city."

The commissioner said the elimination of the units at all 77 precincts and a handful of housing units is a "big move" in the culture of policing but an important part of overall reform. 

"We always struggle with, I believe as police executives, is not keeping crime down—it's keeping crime down and keeping the community working with us," Shea said. "And I think those two things, at times, have been at odds."

He added that this is in the realm of "closing one of the last chapters of stop, question, and frisk."

"We can do it with brains. We can do it with guile. We can move away from brute force," Shea said. "It is lost on no one, certainly not the people that live in the neighborhoods that we serve, that endure being stopped or their children being stopped. We can do it better, we can do it smarter, and we will."

In a statement, the union that represents rank-and-file cops questioned the wisdom of the commissioner's move.

"Anti-Crime's mission was to protect New Yorkers by proactively preventing crime, especially gun violence. Shooting and murders are both climbing steadily upward, but our city leaders have clearly decided that proactive policing isn't a priority anymore," PBA President Patrick Lynch said. "They chose this strategy. They will have to reckon with the consequences."